wojtek
On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 12:24 PM, Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> wrote:
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>
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> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/14/facebook-microsoft-rightwing-lobby-network-spn
>
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> Facebook and Microsoft help fund rightwing lobby network, report finds
> State Policy Network rejects climate change, opposes workers' rights – and
> is backed by some top US tech and telecoms firms
>
> Ed Pilkington in New York
> theguardian.com, Thursday 14 November 2013 09.33 EST
>
>
> Microsoft, Facebook and Time Warner each sponsored SPN’s most recent
> annual meeting in Oklahoma City. Photograph: Dado Ruvic/Reuters
> Some of America’s largest technology and telecoms companies, including
> Facebook, Microsoft and AT&T, are backing a network of self-styled
> “free-market thinktanks” promoting a radical rightwing agenda in states
> across the nation, according to a new report by a lobbying watchdog.
>
> The Center for Media and Democracy asserts that the State Policy Network
> (SPN), an umbrella group of 64 thinktanks based in each of the 50 states,
> is acting as a largely beneath-the-radar lobbying machine for major
> corporations and rightwing donors.
>
> Its policies include cutting taxes, opposing climate change regulations,
> advocating reductions in labour protections and the minimum wage,
> privatising education, restricting voter rights and lobbying for the
> tobacco industry.
>
> The network’s $83.2m annual warchest comes from major donors. These
> include the Koch brothers, the energy tycoons who are a mainstay of Tea
> Party groups and climate change sceptics; the tobacco company Philip Morris
> and its parent company Altria Group; the food giant Kraft; and the
> multinational drugs company GlaxoSmithKline.
>
> More surprisingly, backers also include Facebook and Microsoft, as well as
> the telecoms giants AT&T, Time Warner Cable and Verizon.
>
> The CMD study uncovered a public document that listed SPN’s funders in
> 2010. They included: AT&T and Microsoft, which each donated up to $99,000;
> and Time Warner Cable and Verizon, which each contributed up to $24,000. In
> addition, Facebook, Microsoft and Time Warner each sponsored SPN’s most
> recent annual meeting in Oklahoma City in September.
>
> Lisa Graves, the director of the Center for Media and Democracy, said it
> was “disappointing” that Facebook and the other technology and telecoms
> companies had “put their hat in the ring, given SPN’s extreme agenda that
> includes climate change denial, making it harder for Americans to vote, and
> attacking workers’ rights.” She called on the firms to “reconsider their
> support, as it is at odds with science and common sense.”
>
> Tracie Sharp, the president of SPN, rebutted the charge that it operates
> as a rightwing lobbying network. In a statement, she said that the network
> was dedicated to providing “state-based, free-market thinktanks with the
> academic and management resources required to run a non-profit
> institution”. Each of its 64 member thinktanks were “fiercely independent,
> choosing to manage their staff, pick their own research topics and educate
> the public on those issues they deem most appropriate for their state.”
>
> But she added that “every thinktank, however, rallies around a common
> belief: the power of free markets and free people to create a healthy,
> prosperous society.”
>
> The State Policy Network operates a tech/telecom policy exchange in which
> it campaigns against taxes on internet shopping and against the regulatory
> activities of the Federal Communications Commission. Though much of that
> thinking could not reasonably be characterised as what the CMD report calls
> an “extreme rightwing agenda”, the tech and telecoms companies' inclusion
> on the list of funders puts them alongside some strange bedfellows.
>
> The Guardian invited the technology and telecoms companies to respond to
> the allegation that they have sponsored a network devoted to “extreme”
> rightwing causes, but most either declined to comment or had not responded
> by the time of publication.
>
> In a statement, a spokesperson for Microsoft said: “As a large company,
> Microsoft has great interest in the many policy issues discussed across the
> country. We have a longstanding record of engaging with a broad assortment
> of groups on a bipartisan basis, both at the national and local level. In
> regard to State Policy Network, Microsoft has focused our participation on
> their technology policy work group because it is valuable forum to hear
> various perspectives about technology challenges and to share potential
> solutions.”
>
> SPN works in parallel with the American Legislative Exchange Council,
> Alec, a forum that brings together largely Republican legislators and
> corporations to devise model bills that are used to attack workers’ rights
> in various US states.
>
> The Koch brothers have donated directly to the network either personally
> or through corporate funds from Koch Industries and from family
> foundations. Two closely-related funds, the Donors Trust and Donors Capital
> Fund, described by Mother Jones as the “dark money ATM of the conservative
> movement”, give at least $1.5m a year – channeling money to the network
> from individual donors whose identity the funds obscure.
>
> Several prominent rightwing billionaire donors are also involved,
> including Art Pope, an ally of the Koch brothers; the Walton family of
> Walmart, which funds SPN members in Arkansas, California, Massachusetts and
> Washington state; the foundation of billionaire Republican donor Richard
> Mellon Scaife; and the Searle Freedom Trust, created out of the fortune of
> the creator of NutraSweet, which funds a number of conservative causes.
>
> Graves said that the individual thinktanks who make up SPN present
> themselves as “neutral, non-partisan groups, but are in fact part of a
> national network to project the voices and interests of some of the most
> powerful corporations and families in the country”.
>
> Gordon Lafer, a professor at the University of Oregon, said that SPN
> groups were actively targeting the rights of often non-unionised employees.
> His research had uncovered attempts to expand the use of child labour, cut
> the minimum wage, reduce unemployment benefit, make it harder to sue
> employers for sex or race discrimination, or even to police wage theft
> where companies refused to pay workers over-time or any wages at all.
>
> “These are a very dramatic package of proposals at a time of economic
> hardship, and they are being rolled out in a cookie-cutter fashion from
> state to state, and affecting the lives of working people across the
> country.”
>
> Lafer added: “This looks like scholarship from local organisations, but in
> fact it is neither – neither scholarship, nor local.”
>
>
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-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."